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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2018

  Happy UAE

  Joshua Schwartzstein, Brian J. Hall, Tiffany Y. Chang, Karim Sameh and Alpana Thapar

  This case centers around the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) national goal of raising the happiness of its residents and visitors through ambitious government initiatives. They combined this bold national goal with an accountability structure (incentive plan) built on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as more typically done at a company level. A key case protagonist is Ohood Al Roumi: the UAE and the world's first dedicated Minister of State for Happiness and Wellbeing. She was assigned to this role by Sheikh Mohammed, the Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. Al Roumi attempted to drive national progress towards happiness in UAE society through several means: measuring happiness in the community and happiness with government services; aligning and coordinating government entities towards promoting happiness and positivity at work; and promoting happiness as a lifestyle more generally.
  The case details the UAE's progress through February 2018. The class discussion gives students a chance to reflect on the role of government in promoting happiness and wellbeing and how a government could go about encouraging happiness. The UAE in effect implemented a complex incentive scheme with the aim of coordinating attempts to increase happiness and wellbeing. The connection between the UAE's efforts and incentive schemes emerges in the course of the class discussion, which enables students to reflect on concrete managerial implications of the analysis.

  Keywords: Happiness; Welfare or Wellbeing; Governance; Motivation and Incentives; United Arab Emirates;

  Citation:

  Schwartzstein, Joshua, Brian J. Hall, Tiffany Y. Chang, Karim Sameh, and Alpana Thapar. "Happy UAE." Harvard Business School Case 918-041, April 2018.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2018

  GiveDirectly

  John Beshears, Joshua Schwartzstein, Tiffany Y. Chang and Brian J. Hall

  How should nonprofits design compensation systems to attract and retain talent? GiveDirectly is a respected charitable organization with an unconventional approach. Instead of spending on traditional aid programs in areas such as health care and food access in developing countries, GiveDirectly transfers cash directly to the poor. As experiments have shown this approach to be an effective and efficient way to improve recipients’ life satisfaction, the organization has attracted considerable attention among donors and the media. Now, GiveDirectly is looking to grow, and it is contemplating how best to recruit talented employees and keep them motivated. In addition to offering salaries competitive with the private sector, GiveDirectly is considering linking employee compensation to organizational goals regarding the amount of cash transferred—an unusual strategy for a nonprofit.

  Keywords: nonprofits; charity; effective altruism; international aid; compensation; goals; bonuses; incentives; GiveDirectly; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Recruitment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving;

  Citation:

  Beshears, John, Joshua Schwartzstein, Tiffany Y. Chang, and Brian J. Hall. "GiveDirectly." Harvard Business School Case 918-036, March 2018.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

  Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures

  Karen Huang, Alison Wood Brooks, Ryan W. Buell, Brian Hall and Laura Huang

  People often feel malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, when they compare themselves to successful peers. Across two online experiments and an experimental field study, we identify an interpersonal strategy that can mitigate others’ feelings of malicious envy: revealing one’s failures. People are reticent to reveal their failures—both as they are happening and after they have occurred. However, in two experiments, we find that revealing successes and the failures encountered on the path to success (compared to revealing only successes) decreases observers’ malicious envy. This effect holds regardless of whether the individual is ambiguously or unambiguously successful. Then, in a field experiment set in an entrepreneurial pitch competition, where pride displays are common and stakes are high, we find suggestive evidence that learning about the failures of a successful entrepreneur decreases observers’ malicious envy, increases their benign envy, decreases their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s hubristic pride (i.e., arrogance), and increases their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s authentic pride (i.e., confidence). These findings align with previous work on the social-functional relation of envy and pride. Taken together, our results highlight how revealing the failures encountered on the way to success can be a counterintuitive yet effective interpersonal emotion regulation strategy.

  Keywords: envy; malicious envy; Emotion Regulation; disclosure; Emotions; Perception; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Strategy;

  Citation:

  Huang, Karen, Alison Wood Brooks, Ryan W. Buell, Brian Hall, and Laura Huang. "Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-080, February 2018.  View Details

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